


Into my heart an air that kills

by queenofinks



Category: Fallen London | Echo Bazaar
Genre: Bag A Legend Conclusion Spoilers, Other, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-17
Updated: 2020-04-17
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:53:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23705683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenofinks/pseuds/queenofinks
Summary: That is the land of lost content,I see its shining plain,The happy highways where I wentAnd cannot come again.Or: a fragment of Mr Veils meets a fragment of Mr Candles on the surface.
Relationships: Mr Candles/Mr Veils
Comments: 6
Kudos: 12





	Into my heart an air that kills

The strains of a piano fill the frescoed halls of the Marchioness’s villa. You need only peer into the ballroom to find its source: a young man playing a tune for a small crowd of rapt Society members. He is sleek and elegant in a black tailored dinner jacket, crisp dress shirt and white bow tie; forgettable, if not for the honeyed sheen of his eyes. You could mistake him for the eldest son of some foreign attaché, but you don’t. He grins when he catches your gaze; and the slow, stately melody transforms into a fast, flirty _capriccio_ that makes a waistcoated gentleman standing next to you blush.

You keep looking for him. Your eyes meet across the parquet floor when you dance with different partners (while being careful of your old hip injury). You hear his laughter rippling through the air. Once, his hand even brushes yours as you reach for the same salver of _canapés_. Familiar heat flows through your glove. You open your mouth to speak, but he pops a _vol-au-vent_ on your tongue and is gone before you can swallow.

You get the distinct impression he is baiting you.

You ask about the identity of your elusive stranger. Over Sobranie cigarettes, a Raspy Dowager tells you of his recent attendance to a psychology conference in Pennsylvania. A Droopy-Eyed Minister speaks of his work with the disabled when you ply him with brandy. A giggling maidservant confides that he is the _Lord _______ Bright_ , although he never uses that title, probably out of humility. She is vague when you question her about the location of his barony. From these snippets, you piece together the portrait of a forward-thinking prodigy. Then you plan out your attack.

Excusing yourself for air, you hobble toward the balcony. If Lord Bright’s countless glances are any betrayal of his feelings, he will soon follow you. Minutes later, you hear footsteps and turn expectantly in their direction. The crystal lights of the ballroom blaze behind your bright-eyed quarry. If you allow your vision to blur, you can convince yourself that his silhouette is different: less human.

“Hello, Mr Veils!”

He sounds far too cheerful. You lean your elbow on the stone parapet and ignore the gnawing at your gut. “How much do you remember?” you ask, straight to the point.

“Not a lot,” he admits. He closes the distance between you in three even strides. This close, you can see something that mars the good looks you had initially dismissed: faded scars that reach out from under the collar of his shirt and choke him like ivied weeds. “I had an accident a long time ago; it’s left me with a faulty memory. But we’ve met before, haven’t we? Only – ” He laughs; the memory _burns_. “I don’t think you were this small.”

You eyeball him sharply. He is shorter than you.

“Do you know who I am?”

You contrive to yawn. “The Lord Bright, as I’m informed.”

He looks briefly disappointed. “Yes, if that’s what you want to call me.” His hand, which has the standard number of fingers, extends toward you. You look down at it – broad and calloused, you see with some surprise – before slowly grasping it and shaking. He practically beams.

“What brings you to the Marchioness’s salon?” he asks.

You’ve left a letter in her husband’s study full of the most lurid details about his affair with a minister’s young daughter. By the end of this week, his coffers should belong to you. “She provides excellent music,” you tell Bright instead, holding up a plate of finger foods. “And the most wonderful canapés.”

He reaches over to pluck a canapé from you with a smile. You watch him ferry the pastry to his lips, which are pink, dewy and smooth: a human’s mouth, to be sure. Without breaking eye contact, he sinks his teeth into the canapé; chews, and swallows. Your eyes follow the curve of his throat, the bob of his Adam’s apple. You are suddenly hyperaware of how tight your skin is.

“ _Mmm_.” The groan he makes is low and delighted. You are utterly miserable. 

“What brings _you_ here?” you ask, relieved to hear you do not sound as breathless as you feel.

“Oh, the Marchioness and I go back.” He drapes himself over the balcony, looking for all the world like a relaxed saint. “I treated her night terrors once. She’s fond of me.”

You stamp down any feelings of jealousy by filing this information away into your mental network of intelligence. “You’re a psychologist?”

“Yes?” When you press him for clarification, he sighs. “It’s not the ideal term I would use. Psychology is more the realm of nervous disorders: farm wives and stressed businessmen. I focus on dreams.” 

The bark of laughter you let out is loud and bitter. Bright shoots you a puzzled glance.

“Forgive me. A private joke.” You finally introduce yourself to him: you are no longer _Mr Veils_ these days, but a title more suited to your false skin. You conveniently omit the fact that you have many titles that fulfil such a purpose, so you use the one the Marchioness printed on your invitation. He looks slightly more at ease.

“D’you want to come home with me?” he suddenly asks. At your bemused expression, he grins sheepishly with disappointingly blunt teeth. “Too many Society types here. We’ll be lost in a sea of barouches once the evening is over.”

You refrain from pointing out that this _is_ a Society function. “Very well. We can talk more _privately,_ that way.”

If he understands your meaning, he doesn’t comment on it. You take your walking stick, and he leads you into the night.

* * *

Six months ago, an ambitious hunter tried to kill you. You had a four-million-echo bounty on your head (that you had placed yourself), so you expected hunters – and you were hungry, so you welcomed them. What you hadn’t expected was for the hunter to persist. To make your death lasting, the hunter had consulted a nun; then a Revolutionary; and then planted a bomb in your dreams so it could split you in three. They hunted down and killed your other parts. But when it came time to kill you, you revealed to the hunter the true extent of your influence. They lowered their weapon – and had that been a glint of greed in their eyes you saw?

You did not want to die; they did not want to lose your influence. So, you agreed: you would live as long as you executed their will on the Surface and make them inheritor of your power in the Neath. You are not sure, however, if accompanying a fragment of your long-lost love counts as ‘executing their will’. 

You pay more attention to the route Bright takes than you do him. He lives in an older part of town, less affluent than the villa from which you came, but still scenic. His apartment is in a long, tall, stuccoed building, located on the highest floor – something he explains to you with an apologetic glance at your walking stick. You ignore him and resolutely walk up the stairs.

When he opens the door to his suite, you hear an ungodly caterwauling from inside. The noise resolves itself as a gaunt, ragged, yellow-eyed cat with sharp, silvered talons that gleam in the darkness. It twines around Bright’s ankles, fixing you with a baleful stare. You curb the impulse to bare your teeth.

Bright scratches the Wretched Mog behind its ears. “Behave, you.” He herds it inside, speaking to you over his shoulder. “Don’t let him cow you; he’s a darling. Found him waiting outside my apartment one day and we’ve not been a day apart since. Kind of like an old friend, eh?”

You scowl. “Indeed.”

You step inside the pitch-black apartment, made gloomier by the lack of gas lamps. Bright walks past you toward a set of drawers; obtains a matchbox; procures a matchstick; strikes it; and darts from candle to candle, lighting several tapers. There are a ridiculous amount of candles in his apartment.

You shrug off your coat and walk toward the fireplace. You run a finger along the mantelpiece: globs of old wax stain the marble and peel away at your touch. “Did you make these?”

“The candles?” Bright looks up, face cross-hatched by dramatic shadows, like a chiaroscuro woodcut. “I – yes.” He laughs nervously. “It was the first thing I remembered how to do, believe it or not.”

“I believe you.”

When enough candles are lit, he ushers you to a chaise longue. You sit, half expecting him to join you. Only now is when you notice the myriad of mirrors propped up around the room. He takes up a spot on a stiff-backed armchair opposite you, still clad in full evening wear. Silence falls, punctuated by the _tick-tick-tick_ of a grandfather clock.

“I wanted to ask you some things.” You wait. He wrings his hands. “About before. You knew me before I had my accident.”

“Yes.” You inspect your nail beds. “But it wasn’t an accident.”

Even in the moonlight, you see how his hands twitch.

“How did we meet?”

“We were business partners.”

“What business?”

“Light and textiles,” you say easily.

Bright frowns. Before he has the chance to ask what you mean, you round on him with your own set of questions.

“What do you remember?” is the first thing you demand.

He hesitates. “I remember there were 11 of us.”

“ _Y_ _es_.” It’s more of a hiss; some part of you (as if you _needed_ to be fragmented any more than you are) relishes in his confusion, his obvious struggle for recollection. But the other part despairs of his ignorance. Has this fragment only recently started existing? Or is this some human whose scent merely reminds you of Candles? What is he? "And do you remember what we all were?"

"Business partners?" he answers feebly.

"More than that." _We were prisoners! Beggars and thieves! Liars and runts, light-bringers, deceivers!_

 _Tick. Tick_. 

"I don't know," he says at last.

Had you kept your fur instead of these starched suits, you might have bristled with impatience. "And what about _me?"_

The hesitation isn't as long this time. "You were my friend," he says, and you almost believe him.

"More than that."

Silence.

"I see." His voice drops like a Fluke Core to the bottom of the zee, leaden with emotion.

But you are no fool. To you, his intentions are transparent as glass. He can be as bashful as he wants, but why else would this Candles fragment invite you to his apartment, if not to betray you? He desires you; you felt it in his gaze, back at the ballroom and on the balcony. He must think himself above the needs of the flesh, but you have always known Candles better than he knew himself. Almost purring, you tell him: "Is that why you brought me here, _my Lord_ _?"_

"No!" He looks genuinely aghast. "G_d, no." 

"Oh?"

" _Absolutely_." The earnestness in his voice nearly succeeds in throwing you completely off-kilter. You blink as he gets off his chair. “I just wanted to know what I am.” Not _who I am_ , a voice in your head points out.

As you’ve been talking, he’s moved closer to you: close enough that you can feel the heat emanating through his clothes as he reaches forward like he means to clasp your hands. Not carnally; _intimately_. His face is an open wound; tender, vulnerable, raw. The wrongness of the situation hits you at once. You plant a many-jointed hand against his shoulder and push him away, recoiling into the darkness.

Your voice drops dangerously low as you hunch up in your chair. _“That’s_ all you want?” 

Bright raises a hand and falters like you’re an animal he knows will bite. This only drives your fury.

Though you will never be a Curator again, memories are hard to kill. The man sitting before you is living proof. Memory shapes your being; memory and shadow, which carves a long, foxlike snout from the malleable fabric of your face and grows the teeth from your gums. “ _This_ is what we are,” you hiss at him over the sound of your tearing flesh.

“I – I don’t – ” he stammers. He must think he's dreaming; lost in his precious reveries. “Veils, what are you – ”

THIS IS WHAT WE ARE.

The Correspondence splits the air with a bang. Shadows cling to you and congeal. You see your reflection twist and grow from different angles: horned and sharp and impossibly tall, with wings expanding at your sides like folds of deepest night. Your mouth is full of teeth. Candles ( _no_ ) stares up at you, a look of pure terror on his face. 

“Veils?” he says, his voice small. Everything about him is so, _so_ small. (This isn’t right.)

You roar with frustration. Your wing lashes out; a mirror shatters to pieces.

“Veils.”

He is small and _weak_. You could kill him like this. You wouldn’t even need to drown him this time.

“Veils!”

And would it be worth it, do you think?

“Veils, _stop!_ ”

And just like that, the illusion shatters. You are the grey-haired intriguer once more, with its pinstripe suit and twisted hip. You have never killed another being in your life; not an officious diplomat nor a haughty retainer, not even your greatest love. The shadows melt away, and you are left sitting on your chair. A long silence rings. Bright will not look you in the eye.

Finally, he gets up and points to the door. His arm trembles. “Leave.” You begin to say his name –

“ _Leave!_ ” It isn’t Correspondence, but his voice cracks like thunder. You’ve upset him.

You gather your coat and walking stick, but you do not head for the door yet. “I have offended you.”

“I said _leave_.” He is crying, you realise; his shoulders lurch with every stifled sob.

You try, one last time. “But you wanted – ”

“ _Get OUT!_ ”

You grimace. You've learnt enough from your diplomatic missions when to give up and come back later. Bowing your head, you take your leave; the Mog tenses up and snarls as you walk past it.

Only when you are about to close the door, do you look back at Bright standing alone, haloed by candlelight. His silhouette is all wrong: as small and feeble as when the Third City fell, you think. You cannot see his eyes, but you know they would be full of tears.

( _Master’s blood draining. A lungful of tears. A harsh wind in a high wilderness._ )

You close the door behind you. You don't look back.

**Author's Note:**

> my first feeble attempt at a chaptered fic, which will hopefully span three chapters
> 
> everything i know about bag a legend is scraped together from secondhand knowledge so if you spot any textual inconsistencies or glaring errors then PLEASE point them out to me
> 
> ty for reading, as always here is the [tumblr link](https://queenofinks.tumblr.com/post/615682505650126848/into-my-heart-an-air-that-kills-chapter-1)


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